PS Batch... Command: It's Like Watching a Movie

Do you have a digital camera? Do you need to resize a thousand photos?

Yes, I know, there are free batch resizers available online, and even you guys can code one if you felt like it. So for those who do not know how to make one, or is too lazy to get one, but luckily has a copy of photoshop, here's something for you. There's a command in the File menu that often gets ignored (at least by the people I know) -- it's the batch command. Ignored simply because they think that it's a hassle to set up. It's actually so easy, c'mon!

Before you can use this command, you should have an Action. Actions are like "macros" - you can record anything you do in PS and recreate it with a single click. Pretty neat huh! We'll make a simple batch resizer. Let's start!

• Open up an image.
• Open the Actions panel.
• Click the "New set" icon (Looks like a folder) and name it.
• Click the "New action" icon (Looks like a folded paper) and name it.
• Click the "Record" icon (Errr... looks like a record button). LOL.
• After step 4, you can actually do whatever you like, but for the examples sake, Image > Image Size... let's just try to set it to 640 x 480. Click ok.
• Press the "Stop" icon in the Actions panel (The square one..)

Now let's use that create action in the Batch command. Here goes.

• Click File > Automate > Batch...
• (From hereon, see screenshot below for reference) Choose the set we created.
• Choose the action we created. (Since isa lang naman yung action sa set natin, it will be the initial pick.)
• Source - choose what's appropriate. Usually it would be "Folder".
• (Assuming Folder) Click Choose... button, then point to directory containing pictures/images to be resized.
• Destination - I usually choose "Folder" here as to preserve the original source. But if you don't need the originals, choose "Save and Close".
• (Assuming Folder) Click Choose... button, then point to directory where you want the resized images to be dumped to.
• (Assuming Folder) You can assign the new resized files a new name here. There are a lot of choices in each dropdown box. You can also explicitly type it out. Just remember to at least concat an incrementing value to avoid overwriting stuff.
• Click OK!

NOTE: You can use Batch... for anything! I only used resizing as an example. If the Actions can record it, you can Batch it.

See, was that too hard? Now you can sit back and watch PS do the work for you. As the title goes, "It's like watching a movie." Hehehe.